WMATA - red signal violations

At this week's Board hearing there will be a presentation on the status of red signal violations. Attached to the briefing is the "Atticus" report, a recent in-depth analysis of red signal violations at Metro. An interesting read. http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/board_ ... chment.pdf

So how are the signals setup approaching a red signal? I know here on Atlanta's MARTA, which is a contemporary of WMATA, there seems to be a two-block "buffer" in front of a red signal (or the track-signaled equivalent). In other words, if the signal at the entrance to block 3 is at stop, the signal at the entrance to blocks 2 and 1 are both also at stop so the train picks up the 0-speed command when entering 1, and stops before entering 2 leaving a full block of buffer before the signal for block 3. The NYC subway uses a similar system but with waysides instead of speed commands. It just seems like WMATA's signal violations are happening too easily so I'm curious to understand the technical side of how the blocks are setup.

An interesting read. They lay the blame in part on the "Big Rush-Rush" culture where the operators feel pressure to stick to a schedule, and as a result they sometimes skip steps. Sometimes operators will "lose situational awareness" for one reason or another, sometimes they get distracted by other events, and sometimes the operators kind of mentally go into autopilot mode and have expectations about what is about to happen which turn out not to be the case.

How ironic. Another one yesterday, at the same spot as the last one. Over ran the platform and a signal. It says there was no "major" damage to the switch, which would imply it was damaged at list a bit.
http://wtop.com/tracking-metro-24-7/201 ... ed-signal/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just read through the published reports on past violations. It's amazing to me how only a few of them involved any disciplinary action. And WMATA acts surprised this happens....

Also, In the last one, the Atticus report stated the train operators mental state at the time was "discombobulated". I don't believe I've ever seen that word used in an official report before.

There were several aspects of this report that makes me hope not that much money was spent (ahaha, yea right). One of them was the quality of the writing.